Intermission: Kitten Report

For those who took an interest in the kitten, Star, here’s a report. The story began with the April 28 post, “A New Life”.

The hope that Star would become a companion for lonely Lovey was happily fulfilled, as you can see from the progression of pictures. (Click to enlarge.)

FROM HERE


TO HERE


Star is definitely still a kitten although she has grown from 1 pound to over 3 pounds. She still runs squealing to her humans wanting to be picked up and held, but now she also rubs against legs in passing and arches her back if stroked.

As always, she’s constantly in action except when she’s asleep – which is more than she used to be. She disappears in late morning and sleeps for two or three hours. In early May she would fall asleep often, but not long; she would be playing wildly and then her eyes would start to droop and fifteen seconds later she’d be sound asleep – for about 10 minutes.

Only in the past few days has she begun to lie down wide awake and just watch things.

Her body seems to grow one part at a time – looking one morning as if her front end has been jacked up overnight, and the next day as if her hinds legs have grown longer to keep up with her front legs, bringing her noticeably higher off the ground than she was a couple of days before. Her body then catches up by lengthening from nose to tail. Sometimes you can almost watch her head growing bigger too, and her little kitten eyes looking more like cat eyes.

I think her sequence of behavior changes are all instinctive: She began licking a paw and cleaning her face with it for the first time a few days ago, and then she began grooming her fur with her tongue, “giving herself a bath”. Only in the past week has she thought of pulling her claws on rugs and discovered chasing her own tail.

When she was very small she spent most of her time biting on things and exploring. Now batting and chasing balls, wads of paper, a hair curler, anything that skids or rolls, has become a major occupation. Several of her toys were found in her food dish, others lined neatly up at the base of a wall.

One of her longer term projects has been to get up on things she couldn’t attain before. Originally she depended on squealing to humans and jumping onto their ankles to be elevated to higher places. Her first attempts at climbing were without much success. She used to dangle from the sides of chairs kicking her hind feet uselessly, but with a little more growth she has managed to scramble all the way up, and now she jumps from the floor right into a chair or a lap.

The biggest recent development is her interest in climbing the palm trees by the pool and using the little palm tree trunk as nature's scratching post. It has already been well worn down by previous cats.

FIND THE KITTEN




Meanwhile dear Lovey watches her with endless fond fascination and has revived some kitten antics of his own. He spends a lot of time playing peek-a-boo and wrestling with Star . . . while her specialty is ambushing him from behind chairs or doors. I think he usually knows where she’s lying in wait, but he indulges her and pretends to be caught unaware.

Star remains the star of the house. The pleasures of living with her as she grows from a tiny kitten are among the greatest of my life.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S ASSISTANT


YAWN


PEACE

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS by FLEMING except "TO HERE" by Julia.

Kitten Meets Pool Monster

That is Elegant Twinkle Star on the left, but that is not big cat Detective Inspector Lovey on the right. Never mind who that is on the right.

Surfaces

In a meditative state, I’m taken to a buoy far out in the calm ocean. The buoy is rocking gently in the sunshine, miles from any shore or boat. Occasionally it emits a soft bell sound.

Then I am miles beyond the buoy, the quietly undulating sea first under the sunlight, then under the stars and a half moon, liquid surface reflecting the lights of the night sky, and I realize that on this surface there is no way to know that just under that meeting place of air and water is a vast world of life, of beings of every size from smallest to largest on Earth, of coral reefs, multicolored, of swift currents, of differing temperatures, of mountains, of hot flows from the earth’s core.

Having known only the surface, the beautiful, reflecting surface of the ocean, there is no way for me to know what is below. And if I were told that creatures lived below the star-shining sheet, I would know it could not be true because creatures must have air in order to breathe. And I would be especially incredulous if whales and squids and barracuda and rays were described to me.

In “real life”, I’m in the swimming pool and our young cat, Detective Inspector Lovey, is on the deck, having never been in the pool, or in water, and never having seen below the surface of the deck. He is inspecting, as usual. We both hear gurgling, knocking sounds from the pool skimmer, and from my position in the water I can see the skimmer basket in its covered grotto, but the cat, attracted by the sounds, curious, careful, sees only the surface of the deck. He knows only, “on this spot are sounds.” Perhaps to a cat all things are alive.

So the lesson is, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. How foolish of me to think that the world my senses show me is all that there is. Other dimensions? I’m not equipped to know them or even imagine them. Other beings not within the reach of my physical senses? I’m no more able to experience their reality than I am to see radio waves, or than a radio is able to turn waves into television pictures. I am simply not designed with such perception, and the limits of my receiver should never be misconceived as the limits to what there is to be received.